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Student population in Hogwarts

JKR said in an interview that there are 'around 1000' students at Hogwarts, but she's said more than once that maths isn't her best subject.

If you take Harry's year, for example, where there are 5 boys in his dorm. Just say there are 5 girls as well, even though we've never seen two of them, which makes 10 Gryffindors in Harry's year. That makes 70 Gryffindors for the entire school. Since there are four Hogwarts houses and the Sorting Hat seems to sort reasonably evenly that makes an approximation of 280 students at Hogwarts. Since I wasn't using exact figures we can give or take a few, but 280 is still a far cry from 1000.

And I just realised that the above information didn't help much at all. >.> I'd suggest going with the lower number, especially if it isn't a crucial part of the story. It just makes more sense, considering the Wizarding World didn't have a very large population to begin with. It would also matter what year you were writing in. I'd take all these things into consideration.

I think it's safe to say that there are probably about 40 students in each year (regardless of houses). This is not an exact figure, and probably varies, but it is what is most commonly used in fanon. It's probably not such a good idea to get totally hung up in the "5 in each dorm" thing, though. It's pretty unrealistic to assume that exactly 10 students get sorted into one house every year, and that half of these are girls and half boys. It probably varies from year to year. Because of possible variations in the number of students, I'd say there can be anywhere between 250 and 300 students at Hogwarts at any given time.

All of the math and statements above are very accurate. But there is an argument missing:

There are probably different birth rates for different years. In the eleven years preceeding Harry's birth, enrollment was probably slightly down, due to the war. In the years after Lily's sacrifice defeated the Dark Lord (the first time), it was probably higher, much like in most of the western world after WWII. Other things can cause dramatic changes in population and birth rate as well, such as financial recessions or boons, climate, availability of food (for whatever reason), disease/pandemics/epidemics or even natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or meteorite strikes (that can cause climactic changes or destruction of crops or spread of disease or simply killing people outright (think Pompeii or the Indonesian earthquake).

Further, the faculty at Hogwarts is fairly small, and at least some of the classes are mandatory through fifth year, and some of them are electives starting in third year. There are not only regular classes but double classes (potions comes to mind) and sometimes double classes twice a week. As near as we know there aren't multiple teachers per subject, at least while Harry is there. (I.e.—McGongall is the only Transfiguration teacher, Snape is the only Potions teacher, etc). For 1000 students in 7 different years to have classes with every single one of those teachers every week, the classes would have to A) be extremely short; B) be extremely full; C) be single sessions once a week; and D) be single-House classes (I.e. a forty student class of Ravenclaws only for single Charms class that lasts half an hour, as opposed to a mixed class of Hufflepuffs & Gryffindors or whatever.) Steve Van Der Ark goes into this in a little bit of detail here: http://www.hp-lexicon.org/essays/ess...-how-many.html

So I think it's entirely possible that Hogwarts "normally" has an enrollment of about 1000 students and can possibly handle more than that, although during Harry's years at the school that doesn't seem to have been necessary.